


Drawn and Quartered

by Laylah



Category: Drawing Blood - Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: Guro Fantasy, M/M, Post-Canon, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-11
Updated: 2010-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:25:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They may have left some things behind, but Trevor still has strange dreams, and Zach still wants to know his secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drawn and Quartered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dai/gifts).



For most of the first year, Zach thinks they really have left Trevor's spooky past behind. It would be hard to keep that kind of creepiness up, wouldn't it, on Jamaica's sun-drenched hillsides and bright, warm beaches. The light and warmth and the fresh breeze -- and okay, the deeply, _deeply_ mellow state induced by some of the world's best ganja -- tend to encourage a more comfortable state of mind.

Winter comes, which around here just means the days are a little milder and the nights sort of cool, instead of any serious change in the weather. And eventually Zach starts to notice that something about Trevor is a little...off. Nothing is going wrong between them, which honestly still surprises Zach sometimes. How often does a crazy whirlwind romance under high-stress conditions actually work out? Outside of the movies, anyway. But they're good together. Trevor is fabulously hot, and enthusiastic in bed, and they're turning out to be really good friends, too, now that they've had enough time to get to know each other. So it's not like Zach is worried about their relationship or anything. He's just worried about Trevor.

Trevor's been spending as much time as ever drawing -- hours at a time, sometimes, now that his hand has recovered enough that he can stand it -- but he seems to have fewer pictures to show for it. And some nights he seems to be sleeping badly, in this way that looks a little like nightmares and a little like wet dreams. One night Trevor wakes up suddenly, bolt upright and gasping for breath, then slips outside without a word. When he comes back to bed, his skin chilled by the night air, Zach pulls him close to keep him warm.

"You okay?" Zach asks.

"Just a bad dream," Trevor says, shaking his head. "Don't worry about it." He rolls over, as if that'll mean the subject is closed. Zach sighs softly. If Trevor won't talk to him, he'll figure it out himself.

Hacking meatspace is a little trickier than hacking online, and way less glamorous, but Zach doesn't let that stop him. He starts looking for clues, one afternoon when Trevor's gone down to the local market to get something they can make for dinner. It turns out it doesn't take him all that long. A torn scrap of paper on the floor near Trevor's drawing table tips him off -- it's a piece of the rough, heavy paper from one of Trevor's sketchbooks, the fancy stuff, one of their biggest expenses these days. He dumps out the trash can there, looking for the rest of the page.

Jackpot. There's a whole little flurry of the scraps, most of them marked with the heavy graphite strokes of Trevor's pencil. Zach collects them and lays them out marked-side-up on Trevor's drawing table, putting them carefully back in order like a jigsaw puzzle. The torn-up image gradually resolves from a scatter of ribs and fingers and smears into a coherent whole.

 _Wow_ do they need to talk about this.

It's a picture of him: not his current look, casual clothes and his new dreads tied back, and not even the half-assed on-the-run look he had going on when they met. In the picture he's dressed -- well, half dressed -- for clubbing in the Quarter, tight pants riding so low they show the hollow of his hipbones, fishnet gloves all the way up his arms, a heavy collar at his throat. He's sprawled on his back like a pinup, his hair is teased up and he's smirking at the viewer like he knows he's hot shit. It's a pretty great expression, really.

And right in the middle of the picture, his bare torso gapes wide open, skin peeled back to reveal the arches of his bottom ribs and the soft shapes of organs nestled against each other in his abdominal cavity. There's a part of Zach that just admires Trevor's skill, the way he can make the exposed loops of intestine look slippery and wet using nothing but pencil. Then there's the instinct part of him that makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck, makes his palms sweat and his mouth dry. And there's the part that feels angry that Trevor didn't _tell_ him, even if he can see how it would be a tough thing to talk about.

He steps away from the picture, leaving it on the table. It would really help if he could get his reactions under control before Trevor gets home, he thinks. Trevor's going to be freaked out enough. Zach paces the length of their little shack, turns, paces back again. He loves Trevor. And after all the crazy shit they've been through, he's pretty sure Trevor loves him, too. That's the really important part, right? The rest they can work out.

By the time Trevor gets home, Zach has mostly calmed down and gotten some perspective. It's a good thing, too, because as soon as Trevor sees the drawing pieced back together on the table his eyes go huge, and he turns like he's going to bolt for the door.

"Trev, wait!" Zach says, lunging after him, grabbing him by the wrist before he can go anywhere. "Wait. Please. Talk to me."

Trevor stands there shuddering, not really looking at Zach. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry. I would never hurt you." He flinches. "I would never hurt you again."

"I know," Zach says. He takes a step closer, wraps his arms around Trevor's waist and holds on. "I know you wouldn't. I love you. I trust you. So please don't shut me out here."

Trevor's arms wrap around him hard enough to squeeze the breath out of him. "What did I ever do to deserve you?" he murmurs.

Zach snorts. "Nothing," he says. "If everything that had happened in your life was because you deserved it, that would be pretty fucked up."

"Thanks," Trevor says. He holds on a minute longer, then takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh that ghosts over the back of Zach's neck. "You really want to hear about it?"

"I really do," Zach says. He tugs Trevor away from the door, toward their bed. "Come on. Let's get comfortable."

They curl up in bed, holding each other loosely. It's easier to face just about anything when they do it together, and being this close is a good reminder that they _do_ have each other, no matter what. Zach waits, letting Trevor have space if he needs it.

After a minute Trevor says, "I'm not sure where to start."

Zach thinks about it. "Start with your dreams," he says. Trevor gives him a look like _he's_ the spooky one, and he shrugs. "You've been sleeping pretty weird lately. I figured you had to be dreaming about something intense."

Trevor laughs hollowly. "Intense," he says. "Yeah. That's one way to put it."

"Birdland?" Zach says.

"No," Trevor says slowly. "I...don't think I'll be going back to Birdland." He licks his lips. "Some of the same themes are there, though. It's another place, another...strange machine." He looks at Zach for a second and then glances away again. "The music in the background always reminds me of that show you did at the Yew."

Is it weird to be flattered that he's gotten into Trevor's head that deeply? Zach isn't sure. "That New Orleans sound," he says.

Trevor nods. "The place I've been dreaming," he says. "I've been calling it the Quarter."

"What do you see there?" Zach asks. The sun's going down, and it's starting to get dark inside. It might be less spooky if he got up to go light a lantern, but he doesn't want to interrupt when Trevor's starting to open up.

"It's really hard to explain," Trevor says. "It's like a real place, but it isn't, you know?" He relaxes into Zach's arms a little bit, closing his eyes. "There are sprawling old trees draped with moss, and wrought-iron fences that twist and bend, like -- did you ever see _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_?"

Zach grins. "Yeah," he says. "It's a classic." Older and way more restrained than the stuff he generally goes for, but he had to respect the quiet, flickering creepiness of it all the same.

"So...like that," Trevor says. "The proportions, and the distorted shapes. And there are only a few colors in the whole city, earth black and moss green, marble white and...and red."

Blood red, Zach translates. It figures that Trevor the artist would talk to him about shapes and colors first. "Who lives there?" he asks.

Trevor laughs hollowly. "Nobody for long," he says. He shakes his head like he knows that's no answer. "The Quarter guts them. Opens them up. Catches them on fence rails, hangs them from the trees. Leaves them on these marble slabs...."

If Zach closes his eyes, he can fill in the details behind Trevor's sparse report, trails of red blood running down black iron, pooling in the gutters, the scent thick and coppery. The cemetery mausoleums decked with bodies too fresh to bury, scattered with red garlands hollowed out from a body's center: heart, lungs, kidneys, liver. Still wet. And the body...white-skinned, white as the marble, without the faint flush Zach has picked up here. "I'm there, aren't I," he says. "That's what that drawing is about."

"I'm sorry," Trevor says.

"Don't be sorry," Zach says. "It's okay." He smiles weakly, tries to lighten the mood a little. "I mean, hey, the me in the picture didn't look too freaked out about it, right?"

Trevor shudders. "It's like that a lot," he whispers. "Birdland was never...wasn't sexual like that. But in the Quarter...."

"Hey, a lot of people feel that way about the Quarter when they're not used to it," Zach says, nudging him with an elbow. He takes a second to think about it, to turn the ideas around a little and see if he can make them settle more comfortably in Trevor's head. "You told me that before we met, you didn't really _do_ anything sexual, right? So it wasn't on your mind then. Now it is. And it's mixing with the other stuff that's really deep in your head."

"I don't want to hurt you," Trevor says miserably.

Zach shakes his head. "You're not hurting me," he says. "You're not Bobby. Just because you can see the pictures doesn't mean you're going to make it really happen." He presses closer, leaning down to kiss the knob of bone at Trevor's shoulder. "Share it with me. I want to help." He lets his hands wander, petting Trevor's skin gently. He's going more for 'comforting' than anything else right now.

"The scariest part," Trevor says, "is that a lot of the time it _doesn't_ scare me until I wake up. That I watch the Quarter take people apart and show me what they look like inside, and it's fascinating. Beautiful. That it makes me want to -- don't." He catches Zach's hand teasing at the waistband of his shorts.

"Okay," Zach says. "Why?"

Trevor stares at him. "Why?"

"Yeah," Zach says. "I'll stop if you want me to, but why are you stopping me? Is it that you don't want that right now, or just that you think you shouldn't?"

"It's creepy, isn't it?" Trevor says. "To want to mess around when we're talking about gutting people alive."

"I guess maybe it is," Zach says, and goes on before Trevor can get the wrong idea. "But I don't care. I trust you, and I want to know what makes you tick, and I -- I'm not going to get scared off of you, not ever, no matter what you dream about and no matter what turns you on."

Trevor takes a shaky, deep breath. "Even if it's...like that drawing?"

"Try me," Zach says. Trevor's shoulders relax all at once, and the little hum of triumph goes off in the back of Zach's brain. Trevor's still like a really complicated code sometimes, wired differently from most people Zach has known -- or maybe it's just that he cares so much more about being able to really reach Trevor. Either way, getting past one more barrier is an achievement.

"Don't stop, then," Trevor says, barely a whisper. He arches his hips off the bed when Zach takes that as an invitation to strip him, and his cock isn't really hard yet but he's pretty clearly thinking about it. Zach squirms out of his own clothes preemptively and curls up against Trevor's side to listen to his dreams.

Trevor tells him about the dream version of the Quarter in halting, jumbled sentences, more like a montage than a story: a collection of images, short scenes, with no real sequence to them. They're vivid, all too easy for Zach to picture: the lurid, funhouse proportions of nightmare, the skeletal black hands of iron and liveoak, the vivid garnet red of thick blood smears, the chilly white of flesh bled dry. Death doesn't always stop them, either. Trevor's voice gets huskier, needier, describing tongues tracing the knob-ends of bones, fingers slipping into open wounds to stroke the slippery organs beneath, skin and secrets pulled away. It's less disturbing than Zach expects it to be, honestly. Trevor is really good at making the blood and gore sound gorgeous and sensual, appealing instead of horrible. And in the moments when it is a little too much, Zach distracts himself with the feel of Trevor's skin against his, or the smoky burr in Trevor's voice as he gets turned on -- either by the scenes he's describing or by Zach touching him, it's hard to tell. It doesn't matter.

"What about me?" Zach asks eventually. The sun's almost completely down by now, their little shack the cool monochrome of night instead of the warm glowing colors of daytime. "You were drawing me, so I'm there, too, right?"

"You're sure you want to hear this?" Trevor asks.

Zach nods, then rolls on top of Trevor to kiss him for reassurance. The conversation they've been having makes kissing new and strange all over again: the insides of their mouths are soft, vulnerable flesh, aren't they? And teeth are more or less bare bones. Zach nips at Trevor's lip, not hard enough to really hurt, just enough to feel that contrast. Trevor shudders. He has to be thinking about it, too.

"I want to hear it," Zach says. "I want you to tell me." He reaches for the windowsill above the head of their bed, snagging the little half-full bottle of lube. "Am I like the others?"

Trevor laughs shakily. "Of course not," he says. "There's nobody like you. Oh my god," he adds, as Zach slicks up his fingers and reaches back behind himself to start lubing up.

"Flattery will get you -- well, okay, all kinds of places," Zach says. "Go on."

"Right. God." Trevor takes a deep breath. His hips rock a little, grinding his cock up against Zach's belly. "I find you in this...I want to call it a club, for the atmosphere, but it's still outside, too, at the same time. There's music, and you're dancing when I get there."

"Already split open?" Zach asks. The inside of his ass is even more delicate tissue than the inside of his mouth, isn't it? It's possible he's never going to think about sex quite the same way again.

"No," Trevor says. "Sometimes other people are, but not you. You're always whole when I find you." It almost makes a weird kind of sense, Zach decides. He _was_ whole when he met Trevor, but then they both got broken open and put back together by those early days, so there was room for them to fit into each other's lives. "You beckon me closer, and I go to dance with you."

He's ready enough, Zach decides. He throws a leg over Trevor's hips and reaches down to take hold of his cock. "Here." He winks. "Come dance with me."

"God, Zach," Trevor says. His back arches when Zach pushes down on the length of his cock. He slides his hands up Zach's thighs.

"Yeah," Zach says. "So good." He lets Trevor take a few strokes, while he gets used to being so full, and then he says, "So you're dancing with me. Then what? The Quarter takes me apart for you to see?" Trevor nods, short and sharp. "Open me right up and show you all my secrets. You can have them, you know."

"Zach," Trevor says. It's a plea, a prayer, a promise.

"And you touch me," Zach says. He isn't really asking how it goes anymore, is he? He takes Trevor by the wrists and pulls his hands up to Zach's stomach, to the soft, unprotected flesh there. "It's okay. I'm yours. All of me."

Trevor shivers, despite the warmth of the evening, and the look that spreads across his face is pure love -- like he really gets it, like he really deep-down understands how much Zach cares. And _that_ is quite possibly the best thing in the entire world.


End file.
